He's leaving one of the most hitter friendly parks in Arizona and going to Turner Field which is a much more difficult place to hit HR's.

There is some white noise in players H/A spilts. As a whole, players have an OPS about 40 points higher at home. Upton's H/A splits for 2009 & 2010 fall with that norm, Last year he battled a thumb injury all season which could easily explain why we wasn't able to drive the ball (decrease in XBH%,HR% and HR/FB) so you end up with 2011 being the outlier.

Any player moving from a hitters park to pitchers park is cause for concern but I think in Upton's case people are only looking at the surface of what the stats tell us.

There is some white noise in players H/A spilts. As a whole, players have an OPS about 40 points higher at home. Upton's H/A splits for 2009 & 2010 fall with that norm, Last year he battled a thumb injury all season which could easily explain why we wasn't able to drive the ball (decrease in XBH%,HR% and HR/FB) so you end up with 2011 being the outlier.

Any player moving from a hitters park to pitchers park is cause for concern but I think in Upton's case people are only looking at the surface of what the stats tell us.

I agree to an extent. Certainly most players do have worse stats away from home. We'll see if 2011 was the outlier. I'm not convinced Upton's problems aren't real. If the DBacks do have a long term agreement with Prado, I personally would be much more confident in his long term production than Upton. Obviously, Upton has a high ceiling and could take it to the next level but right now I think Prado is the more consistent player. Simple risk vs. reward IMO.

I know this is two pages back, but I've had a grinder at work and am just now sorting through some stuff....I find it hilarious that thanks to JCA some form of a large arrow pointing to the left margin of the screen means platoon, and that in a time of typing and texting in shorthand, it has somehow been deemed better than just typing the word.....since it takes much longer. Awesome.

There is some white noise in players H/A spilts. As a whole, players have an OPS about 40 points higher at home. Upton's H/A splits for 2009 & 2010 fall with that norm, Last year he battled a thumb injury all season which could easily explain why we wasn't able to drive the ball (decrease in XBH%,HR% and HR/FB) so you end up with 2011 being the outlier.

Any player moving from a hitters park to pitchers park is cause for concern but I think in Upton's case people are only looking at the surface of what the stats tell us.

Just to add to your point, people were saying Matt Holliday couldn't hit outside of Coors Field before 2009.

I know this is two pages back, but I've had a grinder at work and am just now sorting through some stuff....I find it hilarious that thanks to JCA some form of a large arrow pointing to the left margin of the screen means platoon, and that in a time of typing and texting in shorthand, it has somehow been deemed better than just typing the word.....since it takes much longer. Awesome.

My arrow points to the poster of the movie. <==============That was the origin. I am a big fan of playing left / right splits and job sharing to get the better halves of performance. Iorg / Mullinicks, Lowenstein / Roenicke, Gomes / Nix , especially as a way to get better cheaply. I used to talk up such job shares so much and use the word that I thought the avi would say it all. Not just a movie, a baseball obsession!

I know this is two pages back, but I've had a grinder at work and am just now sorting through some stuff....I find it hilarious that thanks to JCA some form of a large arrow pointing to the left margin of the screen means platoon, and that in a time of typing and texting in shorthand, it has somehow been deemed better than just typing the word.....since it takes much longer. Awesome.

Absolutely agreed. The fact that anybody drawing a great big silly arrow in their post means "platoon" now is hilarious.

The other WNFF humor I'm loving in the last 24 hours is that when the new thread got started spelling "Strausberg" wrong, everybody started posting random wrong spellings of Strasburg instead of correcting it.

Upton could easily be a 6-7 win player and B.J. could top out at 5. Making up the difference right there.

Should be a great race!

Well yeah, BJ Upton COULD reach a level he's only reached once, 5 years ago, but it's more likely that the Braves lost a win moving from Bourn to him, considering their production over the past three years (<4 WAR per year for BJ vs. >5 WAR per year for Bourn).

And Justin Upton COULD reach a level he's also reached once, but it's also not the most likely scenario. I don't think he's a 3 win player, but I also don't think he's a sustainable 6 win player, unless he can produce 1.5 wins on a regular basis in the field and on the bases. He's topped out twice at .370/.530 and he's not on the steep upcurve of the improvement curve anymore, so it's unlikely that he's going to turn into a .400/.570 monster at this point. 4-5 wins sounds more likely, which might be a slight upgrade over Prado, but not a huge one.

The major win (I guess) is that the Braves have 2 more years of Upton, but considering they're paying him $13 million a season over those two years, it doesn't sound like a huge upgrade over Prado @ $10 million per, which is what he was asking for and the Braves were unwilling to pay.

In any case, it doesn't really matter, since I view the wildcard game as only a slightly bigger tossup than the DS. Both team teams were making the playoffs, before and after this trade.

I think most agree that there is a lot of unrealized potential in the Upton brothers- I wonder what effect playing together will have, either they push each other and both get better, or now they have their best friend to hang out with on road trips and they get lazier (or no effect at all)- this should at least be interesting to watch.

One long-time scout called Ken Brett "... a combination of George Brett [his brother], Fred Lynn, and Roger Maris. He was the best prospect that I ever saw." Ken Brett's numbers never quite lived up to the reputation. "The worse curse in life," Brett would later offer, "is unlimited potential." As the youngest pitcher to ever appear in the World Series, he went on to hurl for a then-record 10 different teams, appear in (and win) one All-Star game, carry a no-hitter into the ninth inning twice, and set the record for most consecutive games with a home run by a pitcher at four.

It's probably just as likely that they've already shown us their highest WAR seasons, than that they have not.

which means that there are decent odds that each has a 5 or 6 WAR season(s) in them- that's far more than can be said of most major leaguers. I'm not equating unrealized potential to disappointment- the Rays certainly got great years out of BJ (the D backs are more of a question mark), I'm just wondering how it will play out with them together. As far as Zimmerman goes, I may be mis-remembering the draft, but I thought he was supposed to be the can't miss almost ready guy with the lower (relatively) ceiling.

As far as Zimmerman goes, I may be mis-remembering the draft, but I thought he was supposed to be the can't miss almost ready guy with the lower (relatively) ceiling.

That's my point, kind of. How long do we hold onto how high their ceilings "should" be? Past the point where Zimmerman has put up multiple better seasons than either of the Upton brothers? BJ is on the wrong side of the production curve and Justin is basically at its peak. Besides the early expectations, what's the reasonable basis for expecting vast improvement from either of them, to the point where Justin [16.7 WAR the past 4 years] is THAT much better an option than Martin Prado [15 WAR the previous 4 seasons].

Justin Upton kind of reminds me of JD Drew (caution - breaking the "only compare race to race" rule). Does ANYONE remember that JD Drew was a pretty good player, or do they continue to think of "unrealized potential" with him?

But instead of 4-5 wins being his "expected level" of production, everyone held him to an impossible standard his entire career because of his scouting report and because he reached it one time (a ridiculous 9 win season in Atlanta).